In this article we present a new composite index of child health, applied to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa, one of the areas of the planet most castigated by poverty. Our index has been constructed attending to the variables defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P2 distance method for…

The well-known s-shaped diffusion of technology curve generally works well in developed countries. But how does it perform in the very different context of developing countries? Across a wide range of new technologies imported from the developed countries it works poorly. In most cases the penetration rate fails to reach 25% of the population. The…

This paper analyzes some aggregation aspects of the procedure for constructing a composite index on a multidimensional socio-economic phenomenon such as development, the main focus being on the unbalance among individual dimensions. First a theoretical framework is set up for the unbalance adjustment of the index. Then an aggregation function is…

This paper proposes a new index of governance based on the Alkire-Foster methodology and compares it with the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance. The proposed new index improves on existing measures of governance in two ways. First, it is able to incorporate both cardinal and ordinal variables without having to assign cardinal meaning to…

The subjective well-being approach to environmental valuation is applied to analyze the valuation of greenhouse gas emissions with a fairness-adjustment in the valuation exercise. Results indicate that industrialized countries have high willingness-to-pay to reduce emissions. Developing countries differ in their valuations. Results indicate that…

Given limited resource availability in a developing nation like India, faced with high incidences of crime, it is important to optimize on the resources spent in combating crime by channelling them to proper direction. This requires an understanding of the actual and overall level of crime across India. Our paper provides a complete understanding…

This paper presents a spatial analysis of multiple deprivation in South Africa and demonstrates that the most deprived areas in the country are located in the rural former homeland areas. The analysis is undertaken using the datazone level South African Index of Multiple Deprivation which was constructed from the 2001 Census. Datazones are a new…

Important steps have been taken at international summits to set up goals and targets to improve the wellbeing of children worldwide. Now the world also has more and better data to monitor progress. This paper presents a new approach to monitoring progress in child poverty reduction based on the Alkire and Foster adjusted headcount ratio and an…

This paper examines the effect of homeownership status on individual subjective wellbeing indicators in urban China using a large nationally representative dataset. It is the first to gauge the relationship between homeownership and individual subjective wellbeing in the setting of China and is also among the few empirical studies concerning…

The current paper constructs a progress measurement appropriate for measuring multiple and different dimensions of progress. The paper is not meant to be a detailed discussion of the framework but rather a demonstrated application of the measure. The constructed resource-infrastructure-environment progress measure employs a non-monetary evaluation…

This paper investigates ten Asian nations to consider how socio-economic values affect happiness and satisfaction. Moreover, it considers whether economic factors can strongly affect wellbeing under certain conditions. Males in Asia are said they have more opportunities to obtain higher happiness and satisfaction but it does not happen in the…

The paper explores attitudes to chronic poverty in a cross-section of developed and developing countries contributing data to the World Values Survey Wave Three (1994-1998). The analysis finds a consistent belief among a majority of respondents that poverty is persistent. The paper also explores the factors influencing public attitudes to chronic…

Using 2008 Afrobarometer survey data, we examine the relationship between religion and subjective well-being (SWB) in Ghana, as well as religious group differences in their experiences of SWB. Two measures of religion--religious affiliation and religious importance, and two measures of SWB--absolute SWB (own perceived living conditions) and…

Quality of life (QoL) measures frequently conceptualise QoL as having distinct life domains. However, research suggests that there may be overlap. In this study, perceptions of links between life areas are explored. At time one, 143 participants in Khon Kaen, Thailand completed the "Global Person Generated Index" (GPGI), nominating up to…

This paper develops an index to evaluate the level of effectiveness of the control of violence based on the data envelopment analysis approach. The index is used to examine the grade of effectiveness of the control of violence at the level of Colombian departments between 1993 and 2007. Comparing the results across Colombian departments, we find…